Adam Olsen, winner in Saanich North and the Islands , B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver and Sonia Furstenau, who won in Cowichan Valley arrive for a press conference at the B.C. legislature last week.DARREN STONE / PNG

Greens have been elected in countries in Europe and South America, and in New Zealand and Australia since the 1970s.

In Germany, the Greens played an instrumental role in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party from 1998-2005, during which they reached agreement to end nuclear power in the country.

Today, in Sweden, the Greens are part of a coalition government and the Greens are deliberating whether to help form a coalition government in the Netherlands, after the recent election there.

In all of these countries, Greens have come to hold power and influence because they have gained seats through proportional representation, under which some seats are distributed as a proportion of the popular vote.

It makes the Green’s breakthrough in British Columbia all the more remarkable, where the province’s first-past-the-post system (where the winner is the candidate with the most votes) disadvantages third parties.

“It’s a system that’s very hard for Greens to break into,” says University of B.C. political scientist Max Cameron, director of the university’s Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

Why the Greens made a breakthrough in B.C. now is hard to pin down exactly, observed Cameron.

The Greens won three seats, all on Vancouver Island, in the election Tuesday. If the results stand following recounts, with the Liberals holding 43 seats and the NDP 41, the Greens will hold the balance of power.

It’s heady stuff for a party that after 30 years of fielding candidates in B.C. finally secured its first seat in the 2013 election, when leader Andrew Weaver won in Oak Bay-Gordon Head in Victoria on Vancouver Island.

Certainly, said Cameron, a big part of the historic breakthrough is the leadership of Weaver, a climate scientist formerly at the University of Victoria.

Cameron said Weaver has been able to appeal to a sort-of anti-partisan sentiment that has been building among the electorate, where they may be disillusioned with the main parties.

Other observers have also noted the phenomena, likening it to the support for U.S. presidential Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders, particularly among young voters. “In some ways, it’s a rejection of the status quo — a protest vote,” said Ben West, an environmental campaigner.

Weaver himself went to great pains to dispel the argument that a vote for Greens was a wasted vote, imploring the electorate to vote for what they believed in.

Said Cameron: “He’s articulated the democratic reform agenda. He’s been very good on money and politics, and he somehow managed to avoid falling into the divisiveness of B.C. politics. I think there’s a kind of a chemistry that’s worked for him. Without his leadership, would that have happened? That’s an open question.”

Michael Prince, a political and social scientist at the University of Victoria, noted that Weaver’s participation in the televised debate with Liberal Leader Christy Clark and NDP Leader John Horgan, where he performed well and was seen as an equal, was a tremendous boost.

Prince also noted that B.C. has had a long history of environmental activism, which gives the Greens appeal, particularly on issues like oil pipelines and increased tanker traffic on the coast.

After all, B.C. gave birth to Greenpeace and is home to world-renowned environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki, said Prince.

“I think it’s the question of how the environment is so tied up in the question of economic development, and the tension and trade-offs between them, and can you square the circle on them,” he said.

As a climate scientist, Weaver has instant credibility on these issues, said Prince.

But the breakthrough for the Greens is also a culmination of a long history in the province.

The first handful of Green candidates ran in the 1983 election with then-leader Adriane Carr, now a Green city councillor in Vancouver.

B.C. was also the first province to elect a Green MP, when leader Elizabeth May won Saanich-Gulf Islands on Vancouver Island in 2011.

Carr believes the inclusion of the Green party in the televised leaders’ debates beginning in 2001 — when the Green’s support jumped to 12 per cent from two per cent the previous election — was a turning point.

And B.C.’s long environmental activist history, which includes banning nuclear power and also uranium mining, cannot be underestimated, she said.

B.C. was home to the “war in the woods” which saw protests of logging in Coastal rainforests in the 1980s and 1990s, including the arrest of 800 people in Clayoquot Sound in 1993.

“We have always been known as a province where the concern around environment has been a greater, top-of-mind issue than perhaps in other jurisdictions,” said Carr.

At the same time as the Greens were gaining wider exposure and legitimacy by being included in the televised debates, the party was developing a full platform that included economic policies and budget estimates.

This major effort to underscore that Greens were not a one-issue party, focused solely on environmental concerns, helped to build public confidence in the party, noted Carr.

This is certainly true of the Greens in 2017, where Weaver put forward a broad platform that included increasing carbon taxes, a wide-ranging plan for housing and increased health and education spending, but which also emphasized the importance of the high-tech industry and natural resources. The plan was also fully-costed, with modest deficits and a promise of a balanced budget in year four.

The Green breakthrough in B.C., particularly given the difficulty of doing so under the first-past-the-post system, has not gone unnoticed by other Greens.

Following the win, the Green Party of Canada quickly issued a statement that said the Green breakthrough in B.C. — where they received 16 per cent of the popular vote, double the last election — shows that people want action on climate change and electoral reform.

In an interview, federal Green Leader Elizabeth May called the breakthrough an extremely significant moment in history, dispelling the idea that people will not, or cannot, vote Green because it is a wasted vote that will keep the Liberals in power.

“B.C. Greens finally defeated fear,” she said.

It will be an inspiration, May said, to Greens throughout Canada, where the party is starting to make inroads in other provinces.

In 2014, Green party Leader David Coon was elected to the New Brunswick legislature, and in 2015, Green party Leader Peter Bevan-Baker was elected in Prince Edward Island.

The B.C. Green breakthrough has also not gone unnoticed across the border.

Jody Grage, a longtime Green organizer at the federal and state level, said there are structural barriers in the U.S. to getting Greens on the ballot, particularly in some states that require tens of thousands of signatures to validate a party.

“Certainly what is going on in Canada and British Columbia is a psychological boost to us,” said Grage, a coordinator at large for the Washington State Green Party. “It is really quite thrilling.”

While the Greens have much to celebrate in the breakthrough in B.C., it is also a potentially hazardous juncture for them.

If the minority government stands, and they have significant influence, there will be a lot a riding on how they handle that power.

Weaver has called as his first priority removing big money from politics by banning corporate and union donations and putting a cap on contributions.

He’s called it a deal breaker, which is not a problem for the NDP who have called for the same.

But the Liberals, under Clark, have only called for a non-binding panel on the issue.

And there are other key elements of the Green party platform that are offside with the Liberals: their opposition to the $9-billion Site-C hydroelectric project in northern B.C., Kinder Morgan’s $7.9-billion oil pipeline expansion that terminates in Burnaby and the development of liquefied natural gas as a new export industry to Asia.

Political observers, including those in the environmental movement, point out there are many supporters who would take a dim view of any collaboration with the Liberals.

But being swallowed up by the NDP in a coalition government also has its pitfalls, particularly if their brand is muted by doing so.

A misstep could undermine the Greens ability to sustain and grow support, particularly if they want to obtain the Holy Grail of electoral reform to give them a proportional representation system that would secure them seats on a continuing basis, and will likely take more than one election cycle.

“The risks are at least as big as the opportunities,” noted Kai Nagata, a campaigner with the Victoria-based Dogwood Initiative, an environmental group opposed to oil pipelines, thermal coal exports and in favour of campaign-financing reform.

Ultimately, the Greens will need to secure some form of proportional representation, said Nagata, even if, initially, they are able to help push through a ban on corporate and union donations.

Both Prince, the University of Victoria professor, and Cameron, the UBC professor, agree that, if not handled properly, the Green’s breakthrough could be short-lived.

Sonia Furstenau, who won Cowichan Valley for the Greens, is fully aware of the historic nature of their breakthrough in the Tuesday election and what is at stake.

But she also knows the win came with a very organized on-the-ground campaign, where she and her supporters knocked on 8,500 doors and held countless meetings with the public to listen to their concerns.

The campaign organization also sprung out of activism to halt a soil dump in Shawnigan Lake over water contamination concerns, which led eventually to the dump’s permit being cancelled.

So, in that sense the win does not seem ephemeral to her.

It’s about building a community that protects the environment while developing an economy, which means not ignoring climate change, for one thing, said Furstenau. “We campaigned with love in our hearts,” she said. “The message during our entire campaign was to vote for hope and optimism, not fear.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.